A Light to My Path (44 page)

Grady caught his breath. If that wasn’t Coop it was someone who looked exactly like him. He had the same stern, narrow face and shrewd eyes, even if his drooping mustache and fringe of receding brown hair had turned iron gray during the past six years. It had to be Coop. But it couldn’t be. Was it him—or wasn’t it?

The question haunted Grady for days. He borrowed the field glasses a second time, then a third, and each tantalizing glimpse made him more and more certain that it was his old enemy. Then, on a foraging raid upriver to bring back provisions and to free the area’s slaves, Grady learned that the squadron’s guide, Peter, was a former slave from Jacksonville.

“Can I ask you a question?” Grady said as he took Peter aside. “Are you knowing a lot of white folks in this town?”

“A fair amount. I’m living here all my life. Why?”

“If I take and show you a white man living near our camp, think you could tell me who he is?”

Peter pulled on his bottom lip and shrugged. “Maybe I can and maybe I can’t. Take me there and we’ll see.”

Grady’s heart speeded up as they neared the house. The “watcher” stood outside on his porch. Grady still felt a jolt of childlike panic each time he saw the man, and he remembered his four years of unrelenting fear.

“That’s him. That’s the man,” Grady said. But as he and Peter approached, the man quickly disappeared into the house. “You know him?” Grady asked.

“Nope. That fella ain’t from Jacksonville. If he’s who I think he is, he just come here about a year ago with a big pile of money. Paid cash for that house. I heard someone say that the Yankees chased him out of his other home. Keeps to himself, mostly.”

“Did he come here all alone?” Grady asked.

“I believe he brought his wife and a couple of slaves.”

William
. If one of those slaves was William, then Grady would be certain. But nearly all of Jacksonville’s slaves had left the city on Union ships shortly after being set free. “Are any of his slaves still staying here in Jacksonville?” he asked hopefully.

Peter shrugged again. “I can ask around. What’s your interest in the man?”

“I’m trying to figure out if he’s my old massa. Looks a lot like him.”

“And if he is… ?” Peter asked.

“Then he’s a slave trader.”

Peter’s reaction was instantaneous. Grady saw his revulsion in his tightly clenched fists and angry grimace. Edward Coop was Peter’s enemy—every slave’s enemy.

“My massa made his fortune sending young gals to brothels and tearing families apart,” Grady continued. “He used to torture and beat us slaves just for the fun of it.”

“I’ll ask around,” Peter said in a husky voice. “I’ll be sure and let you know.”

Peter returned a few days later. “I found a gal who says she worked for the man’s wife until y’all got here. She says they move here from New Orleans—and her massa’s name is Coop.”

A shudder rocked through Grady. His stomach clenched with hatred—and fear.

“I take it that’s the fella,” Peter said.

Grady could barely speak. “Yeah. That’s him.”

Grady wanted to yank Coop from his porch and beat him to within an inch of his life before hanging him from the gallows in the city square. He resisted the urge to dash across the street and grab him right now, knowing he couldn’t accomplish anything alone. He spent the next few hours trying to think of a way to prove to the authorities that Coop had once been a slave trader and deserved to hang—and he finally remembered Amos. The big man was part of Grady’s regiment, but his company had been assigned to guard a different part of Jacksonville. Weeks seemed to pass in between skirmishes, nightly guard duty, and fatigue duty, until Grady finally had enough time off one Sunday afternoon to hunt for Amos.

“I found Massa Coop, the soul trader,” Grady told him without preamble. “He’s living here in town. You remember what he looks like? Think you can back me up when I turn him in to the authorities?”

“Turn him in? For what?”

“He should hang for being a slave trader. And he killed at least one slave that I know of.”

Amos gave a bitter grunt. “They won’t arrest Coop just for killing one of us. And there still ain’t no law against trading slaves. Besides, the whites would never believe our word against another white man’s. Coop probably has all them white officers fooled into thinking he’s a kindly old Southern gentleman. And if he’s got money, he’ll just buy his way out of trouble.”

Grady exhaled in frustration. “What can we do? I don’t want to see him go free.”

“Oh, he ain’t going free, boy. You and me are gonna kill him ourselves.”

A tremor of unease shivered through Grady, but he quickly brushed it aside. It would be justice to kill Coop. What about all the slaves Coop had tortured and killed, all the suffering and abuse he’d caused—separating families, sending young girls to brothels? Didn’t God demand justice for all of that? If Grady felt uneasy, it was probably just fear that he might be caught. He certainly wouldn’t feel any guilt for killing Coop.

“I know plenty of fellas who’ll be willing to help us kill a white slave trader,” Amos continued. “We just have to come up with a plan to make sure we ain’t caught.”

Grady’s mind was already scheming. “What if we waited until a night when I’m on guard duty? There’s a guard post close to Coop’s street. It should be easy to sneak on over there and break into his house, if I’m the one on watch. And if Coop is found dead in the morning, ain’t nobody gonna care.”

Another long week passed until Grady was scheduled for guard duty, the second watch of the night. He requested a pass and hurried across town to Amos’ camp to let him know.

“I’ll be there,” Amos said. And Grady saw a hint of a smile cross the big man’s face.

The night they’d chosen turned out to be perfect, with cloudy, moonless skies and a blanket of damp, gray fog. But Grady waited, interminably it seemed, for Amos to arrive. His watch was nearly over when four shadowy figures finally drifted out of the fog, startling Grady, at first. Amos and the other three men wore slaves’ rags, but Grady knew by the army-issue rifles they carried that they were soldiers just like him.

“I was afraid you weren’t coming,” Grady breathed.

Amos shook his head as if to dismiss his doubts and whispered, “Which house?”

Grady glanced around before leaving his post, then signaled for the others to follow him across the street and around to the backyard. The door was barred from the inside, but one of Amos’ men quickly broke a rear window, muffling the sound with his army blanket. They all climbed through it. The modest house was as dark as a cave inside. Grady stood in the inky stair hall, waiting to move until his eyes adjusted, but Amos and the others quickly spread out to search all the downstairs rooms, as silent and stealthy as cats. They found no sign of Coop.

Amos had just started to lead the way upstairs when a dark figure appeared at the top of the steps. Even in the dark, Grady knew it was Coop. He saw a glint of metal in Coop’s right hand—a pistol—and was about to shout a warning to Amos, when the huge man moved as fast as a panther, tackling Coop around his knees. Coop tumbled down the stairs, and his gun bounced to the floor before he could fire it. The knot of men quickly converged around him, raising their rifle butts to beat him, but Grady pushed them away.

“Wait a minute. I need to be sure.” He jabbed the barrel of his rifle against Coop’s chest and bent over him. Grady saw the man he hated and spit in his face.

“Remember me?” Grady asked, removing his hat. “The slave you lost in a poker game? You called me Joe, but my name is
Grady
.” He kicked Coop in the ribs as he said his name. “Got that?
Grady!
” Even now, he felt the anguish of being a helpless boy, of suffering a brutal beating simply because he’d clung to his name. Now Coop was helpless. Grady kicked him again.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Coop growled. He was breathing rapidly but his expression showed anger, not fear.

“Don’t you remember beating me, like this?” He gripped his gun by the barrel and smashed the butt of it against Coop’s head until he cried out in pain. “Go ahead and yell,” Grady breathed. “Cry for mercy, just like all those slaves you bought and sold. Nobody cares, Coop. Nobody’s gonna listen to you—just like you refused to listen to all their cries.”

Grady stepped back and let the others take their turns, kicking Coop and clubbing him with their rifle butts. Grady allowed them to vent their rage for a minute, then he held up his hands to stop them. He wanted to drag out the torture, make Coop suffer in agony as he waited for the end. He wanted to hear Coop beg.

“Hold it,” Grady said. “We’ll give him a minute to pray for God’s mercy because we ain’t gonna show him any. You deserve to die, Coop. We’re gonna kill you now, in cold blood, just like you killed your first slave named Joe. Remember him? Except your death will be a lot quicker than his.”

“Go ahead and kill me now,” Coop gasped. “I don’t believe in God.”

Grady froze, shocked by his confession. “You … you
what
?”

“That’s right. Religion is just a bunch of myths and lies to appease simple fools like you.”

Cold dread slithered through Grady at Coop’s words. “You … you ain’t sorry for all the harm you done, all the slaves you tortured and killed?”

“I don’t have to apologize to any paltry god for my life, and I don’t intend to. Just kill me—unless you lack the guts,
boy
!”

Grady lifted his rifle butt and brought it down on Coop’s head. He tried to strike him a second time but Amos and the others pushed him aside to swarm all over Coop, beating him and kicking him for what seemed like hours until Coop finally lay still.

“Hold it a minute,” Amos said. The men backed away. Amos knelt to feel the vein in Coop’s neck and said, “He’s dead.”

Coop’s cold gray eyes gazed sightlessly at the ceiling but the rest of his face was unrecognizable. Grady couldn’t take his eyes off him. This was what he’d wanted, what he’d dreamed of doing for years. He should feel triumphant, victorious. Instead, he felt as if his limbs had turned to stone.

“Let’s get out of here,” Amos said. He gripped Grady’s arm and pulled him down the hall and through the house. The men climbed out through the window again, leaving the door barred, and disappeared into the shadows as silently as they’d come.

Grady stood in Coop’s yard for a long moment, disoriented. Then he remembered his abandoned post and broke into a run. He shivered as the damp fog enveloped him, and he realized that he was wringing wet with sweat—that he stank of it. He’d been gone less than ten minutes, and his turn at watch surely wasn’t over yet, but as he dashed across the street he saw a man standing in his place.

“Halt! Who goes there?” the figure called. Grady recognized Joseph’s voice. He remembered that his tentmate was scheduled to relieve him. Grady gave the password and Joseph lowered his rifle.

“Ain’t you coming on duty a little early?” Grady asked. He tried to act casual but his voice shook. His entire body shook.

“Where were you?” Joseph asked. He stared at Grady as if he’d never seen him before.

“I … um … I went to check something out over there.” He tilted his head in the general direction of Coop’s house. “Heard a noise. Turned out to be nothing.”

He followed Joseph’s gaze as he looked down at Grady’s hands—and he saw that he still gripped his rifle by the barrel, like a club, the way he’d gripped it as he’d smashed it against Coop’s head. Even in the dark, smears of Coop’s blood glistened on the gunstock. His hands were sticky with blood, his light skin stained dark with it. He slowly lowered the rifle, resting the butt on the ground, out of sight.

“What’s going on, Grady?” Joseph asked.

“Nothing. See you in the morning.” He walked away as casually as his trembling limbs would allow and sank down inside their tent. Joseph couldn’t leave his post to follow him.

Grady sat for a long time, waiting to regain control over his shaking hands. When he thought he could use his fingers again, he fumbled in his knapsack for a bandana and a canteen of water, using them to scrub the blood off his rifle and his hands. But now the telltale blood stained the bandana. Grady crawled out of the tent on his hands and knees and burned the evidence in one of the smoldering campfires.

Back in his tent, he still couldn’t sleep. He didn’t know why. It couldn’t be guilt—he had no reason to feel guilty. Coop deserved to die. As his racing mind replayed the night’s events, Grady decided that what he felt wasn’t guilt, but fear. Joseph had seen the blood on his hands.

Grady pretended to be asleep when Joseph came in from his watch. He waited until he heard his tentmate snoring, then got up and went outside long before reveille, feeding wood into the campfire until it blazed. At roll call, Captain Metcalf asked for volunteers to carry supplies to one of the distant picket lines, and Grady quickly offered to go. He returned to camp late in the afternoon and was dismayed to see Joseph watching for him outside their tent, waiting to speak with him.

“You missed all the ruckus across the street this morning,” Joseph said somberly.

Grady feigned surprise. “Oh, yeah? What’s going on?”

“Some white man who lived in that house over there was found dead. His wife’s claiming that a band of Negroes broke in last night and beat her husband to death. She’s hiding in the closet until morning, too scared to move.”

“White folks lie all the time,” Grady said with a shrug. “They’re blaming us for everything.”

“She says one of them had on a Yankee uniform—just like ours.”

Grady could tell by the way that Joseph’s eyes bored into his, that he knew the truth.

“The provost marshal is wanting to talk to you and me,” he continued.

Grady’s stomach made a slow, sickening turn. “What for?”

“He wants to know if we saw or heard anything last night when we was on watch.”

Grady forced himself to hold Joseph’s gaze, challenging him.“Did you see anything on your watch?”

Joe shrugged his bony shoulders.

“Me neither,” Grady said.

“Well, we’re still supposed to go see the marshal. Captain Metcalf said for us to hurry on over there as soon as you got back. Come on.”